‘Law of attraction’ has long history in inspirational writing

“The Secret” is no longer a secret, if it ever was. Commonly called “the law of attraction,” it has exploded into American culture as the new self-fix, fed by dozens of lofty idealisms: “Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into it — good or bad” or “I see beauty all around me” or “I feel the love, the joy and the abundance” or “I am starting over today.”

For some traditional religionists, it sounds like everything that was once said about “life in Christ” as the source of abundance. Or the 1952 book “The Power of Positive Thinking” by the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, which spent 186 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Or a slew of “Possibility Thinking” books by the Rev. Robert Schuller like “If It’s Going to Be, It’s Up to Me.”

“The Secret,” by Australian author Rhonda Byrne, which was published last year, is No. 1 on USA Today’s top 150 books and No. 1 on the New York Times’ advice hardcover list. “The Secret” and the “law of attraction” have been adjudged the veritable formula for success and happiness, a book for transformation on the simple idea that images you plant in your mind set up attractive forces that govern what life doles out to you.

Combined with a release of a documentary film of the same name, also a hot item in the DVD market, Byrne is being credited with positing the wisdom of the ages into a simple instruction for transformation that leads to health, wealth and happiness.

A book echoes verities espoused by numerous giants of thought through history. New Thought and Religious Science followers have especially welcomed it as putting new language to what they tout. Critics say it primarily feeds get-rich goals.

At the New Vision Spiritual Growth Center bookstore in Scottsdale, more than 700 DVDs of “The Secret” have been sold. “We can’t keep it stocked,” said Michelle Medrano, a pastor of the Science of Mind church at the center. “We keep ordering boxes of 80 to 100 of the movies because we are apparently one of the only places in town where people can literally walk into a store and get it and not have to pay for shipping or wait for it to arrive.” During Wednesday night services in March, “The Secret” was the focus. Turnout was strong, Medrano said.

“The Secret” has become a “very empowering concept for people” who “are tired of feeling like victims to the universe,” she said. What’s now “resonating in their souls,” she said, is that people are realizing that attitude is a powerful force in determining one’s fate.

“I don’t want to be condescending, but the law of attraction is one of the core teachings of Science and Mind,” the basis of Religious Science, she said. “In fact our founder (Ernest Holmes) wrote many articles on it, and we teach people ‘The Secret,’ ” she said.

“What is fascinating to me about ‘The Secret’ is that it has been put together in a package and with voices that are now speaking to a broader audience, a broader group of people who a few months ago might have heard about Religious Science or Science of Mind and said, ‘Oh, it’s a cult.’ But now they are going, ‘Oh, that makes sense.’ ”

At Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church in Tempe, affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the DVD was shown and discussed at a regular Tuesday Lunch and Life gathering. “It is not entirely Christian,” said Pastor Gary Boye. “It might not be anti-Christian, but it does have some Christian overtones to it.”

If the law of attraction means to say “if you are sick, it’s your fault, or if you don’t get well, it’s because you are not thinking right, and so forth, those are some religious tenets that are not really compatible with Christianity,” he said. Yet ideas about being optimistic and positive are compatible, he said.

“It seems to be the rage right now like ‘The Da Vinci Code’ was when it came out” and it behooves Christians to see what all the fuss is about, Boye said.

“A lot of the mainline churches were kind of poohpoohing it, so I said to my wife, ‘We should just see it so we have been exposed to it and know what people are talking about and make a judgment ourselves,’ ” Boye said.

Popular interest in “The Secret” led Darylle Dennis, a Phoenix business consultant, to launch a Valley radio show on March 17, “The Law of Attraction in Action.” Airing 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays on KPHX (1480 AM), the show draws from Dennis’ 28 years of teaching “Value Exchange Dynamics” to clients. She teaches ways to create environments where everyone can contribute the value and where participants go beyond providing services and focusing on those with whom they can build relationships to benefit the group.

“People are ready to have a different sense of self,” Dennis said. They are tired of being “powerless to circumstances,” she said.

The big “secret,” she said, is that people are energy inside a universe of energy. Because likeness attracts, positive energy or negative energy will attract more of the same. Descriptions of God or the law of attraction can sound alike, she said. “If God created man in his own image ... then God, in fact, has entrusted man with all the abilities that one would deem are divinely driven, so that would mean that what you think about, you bring about.”

While “The Secret” has been criticized for feeding materialistic drives, it’s more about how human beings interact. Dennis said what she has been teaching since 1979 about value exchange has fallen on too many deaf ears.

But with “The Secret” and a cousin documentary from 2004, “What the $#@%! Do We Know?” she said, “a global consciousness is beginning to be raised. Part of it is that science is coming more together with religion and agreeing on some things for the first time.”

A Mesa pastor of Religious Science, the Rev. Blaine Mays, said “The Secret” has “totally” authenticated his church’s teachings, “but it is not our whole message” and it “has not attracted anybody new into our churches.”

“Our bottom line is ‘seek the kingdom’ and then these things will be added unto you,” Mays said. “We are seeking a higher realization, a deeper realization of who or what we are as spiritual beings, what God is, what the Christ is, and then it can help us.”

“They have left out what we identify as the spiritual dimension in life,” he said. “You can have the goodness of God in your life, but it is more than just having or getting things.”